


a million ways to be cruel

by violentdarlings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series, Power Dynamics, Season Six Compliant, Subtle D/s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7553539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jorah and Daenerys, after she takes Westeros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a million ways to be cruel

**Author's Note:**

> Season six compliant. Titles from A Million Ways To Be Cruel by OK Go.

She doesn’t know when he sleeps.

She refused to give him a white cloak, when the fighting was finally done and King’s Landing was hers, and yet Jorah Mormont is the man who guards her quarters at night. Not every night, to be sure, but often enough. On those infrequent nights when he is not the silent presence at her door, Daenerys sleeps peacefully, without dreaming. She has no need for company, on such nights.

On the nights he stands guard outside her door, it’s like something inside of her snaps as though it never existed at all. Something wakes up in her, and it demands to be soothed. And so she invents excuses to ask him into her quarters.

“Ser Jorah?” she calls, and a moment later the door will swing open. Daenerys sits before her mirror, brushing out her hair, draped in a silk robe that reveals more than it hides. Or perhaps she’ll be in the bath, the milky water hiding everything that matters from his view. Or, if the impish desire to see him squirm is at its peak, she might just recline on her bed nude, and wait for him.

He never makes her wait long. “My queen,” he rumbles from the doorway, and when she looks over to him he will be trying not to look at her. It is a mark of his distraction, how often his eyes will dart over to her, the flicker of them away, the involuntary jerk of their return.

(Tyrion knows, of course, about this little game she indulges herself in. There is little that occurs within the Red Keep that her Hand does not notice. He occasionally comments upon it, dryly, but he does not mock her for her foibles. In return she is kind enough not to mention his own.)

“Ser Jorah,” she’ll say, and he’ll affix his gaze firmly on her eyes, and Daenerys will ignore how she thrills every time his eyes dip lower. “I am in need of more wine,” or sometimes, “Fetch more hot water for my bath.” If she’s feeling particularly cruel, she’ll simply say, “Your queen is desirous of entertainment. Sit and converse with me a while.”

“Khaleesi,” he’ll say, and she’ll raise an eyebrow at him. “Forgive me. My queen. The hour is late.”

“Are you not sworn to serve me no matter the hour?” Once, in a fit of pique, she’d said service instead of serve, and watched his eyes darken and the lump in his throat bob as he’d swallowed.

“Yes,” he’d said, and he always will say, because he’s hers. “Of course, my queen.” And he’ll go, and come back, or he’ll sit in the chair by her bed and stammer through a conversation until the fire in her has settled and she dismisses him from her presence. And out he’ll go, to stand until the light of dawn filters through the corridors of the Red Keep and he is relieved from his post.

In the space between dark and dawn, she often wonders if he thinks her cruel. She wonders if his cock has swelled for her under his armour, if he returns to his rooms and takes himself in hand thinking about her, if he lets himself spill over his fist with her name on his lips and her image stamped into his soul. Or if he strips off his armour and his gambeson, lies on his narrow bed and resolutely does not touch himself, unwilling to defile even the thought of his queen by indulging the aching flesh that she has tormented into rising.

Daenerys does not need to wonder if there are silver haired whores in Kings Landing who have felt the sheer intensity of being the centre of Ser Jorah’s focus, if only for an hour. She has trained him better than that, by now.

She does not like to be a cruel woman. If there was another way, she would like to think that she would not torment him so. But it is a necessary evil. Anything, so she can sleep without being plagued by visions of in the darkness. Anything, to soothe the beast that lives within her, as hungry and merciless as one of her dragons and just as difficult to control. Anything, so that she doesn’t wake up fevered, hips snapping, straining against the broad arm that in her dreams is slung across her waist, pinning her down, building her up, the rasping growl of _Khaleesi_ in her ear –

_“Jorah –”_

And if it is less a necessary evil and more the wicked pleasure of a conqueror queen, then she does not admit that to herself.

Nor does she admit that despite all these years, and all they’ve done to one another, her and Jorah, Daenerys still can’t work out who she’s punishing.


	2. list of standard-issue regrets

“I want to see it,” Daenerys tells him, and Jorah obeys, although he does not like it. He does not bend easily, any more than Daenerys herself does.

There are many variations, but this one might be her favourite.

Daenerys is sitting before her mirror, combing out her hair, when she calls out his name. It’s not for vanity, that she’s chosen this precise endeavour and angle for when he enters the room. Far from it. It’s so that when he opens the door to her chambers (knocking first despite the invitation, because he’s Jorah and she’d expect no less of him), she can see the look (or rather, _looks_ ) on his face.

It’s a study in expressions. The stoic blankness he usually lapses into when he’s not thinking of anything in particular gives way to sharp surprise. It lasts a moment before desire flares dark and deep in his eyes, just for a heartbeat, before he throttles it dead and his face relaxes into something approaching smoothness. But he’s Jorah, and there’s always that flicker buried deep in him, that spark that seems to come to life only when she’s near. She might be wrong. After all, she cannot observe him when she is not present. But still.

“My queen,” he says, and Daenerys doesn’t smile at him, but she lets her eyes soften just a touch. She no longer allows Jorah to call her _khaleesi_. _Khaleesi_ belongs to another time, to a girl who had no dragons but a sun and stars and she was, if not happy, then at least content. _Khaleesi_ is wandering in the Red Waste with a tiny khalasar and the grit of dust in her throat. _Khaleesi_ is the time when she had no reason not to trust him.

She is not Jorah the Andal’s _khaleesi_ , anymore.

“Come here,” she says, and he hesitates only a moment. Once, he would not have hesitated at all. But now he is less certain around her; his time as a slave and the months searching in Valyria for the cure to the grayscale have changed her knight of Bear Island.

(Sometimes, it feels as if she’d give all of Westeros and her dragons as well to take that shame from him. Others, she thinks it is entirely what he deserves.)

“What does my queen require of me?” he asks, stopping a mere six feet away, his voice as rough and low as sand slipping over gravel. There is no escaping that Jorah is of the North, but she is most reminded of it when he speaks. Decades and his journeys on the other side of the world have not taken the accent from his speech, any more than spending the majority of her life in Essos has sapped the Targaryen from her blood.

“I am in need of more wine,” she tells him, but when he moves towards the decanter, she lays her hand over it. Jorah halts as though he has been frozen in place. “But first,” she adds, “I would see it again.”

Jorah’s face closes over as surely as a drawbridge rising to protect a keep. She can see the unwillingness in his expression; something dark and cold in her thrills to it. Someday she will analyse why it brings her such pleasure to force him to do the things he does not want to do. But not today. “My queen,” he begins, and Daenerys wonders if he thinks her cruel, or if he in turn wonders why she torments him in such inexplicable and divine ways. Well, they are divine to her, at least. “I do not understand.”

“You do,” she informs him, and his jaw tenses as though he is biting down on words he dare not say. “Come, Ser Jorah. I do not have all night to wait for you to obey my orders. You serve not at your own leisure.”

“I am in armour, my queen,” he reminds her. He does not wear the full plate of her Queensguard, since he is not one, or the plate that he had once worn as a sellsword and when sworn to her brother. Nor does he wear the informal tunic and breeches of those long, sultry days in Meereen. Rather, he is in cuirass and faulds, gauntlets and boots, and his sword belt ever present around his waist. It is not in his nature to guard her without adequate equipment. He would consider it an insult to her person.

“It is hardly full plate,” Daenerys comments dryly. “Remove your gauntlet and roll up your gambeson. I wish to see it.”

He cannot disobey a direct order from his queen, but Daenerys enjoys watching him struggle against it anyway. After a moment – but oh, such a moment, when it seemed that every muscle in him locked tight and he shifted as though he wanted to flee – he removes his left gauntlet.

Daenerys leans forward, but there is nothing to see yet. He loosens the sleeve of his gambeson and, with some difficulty, rolls it up to his elbow.

Whatever cure he’d found in old Valyria had halted the spread of the grayscale, but it had not removed the pebbled appearance from his skin. His arm up to the elbow (and presumably, beyond) looks like cracked stone turned to flesh, or flesh turned to stone, or somehow both. Daenerys has never touched it. She has a feeling Jorah will not allow her to, for all he is no longer contagious.

When she raises her gaze from his arm to his eyes, he is staring at the floor, and there is a flush high on his cheeks. “Why are you ashamed?” she asks, and she did not mean to, but the words have escaped, she might as well commit to them. “It is a disease, Ser Jorah. Not a crime.”

“A disease I never would have been exposed to had I not betrayed you,” he replies, looking down at his feet. “I can only assume my queen wishes to view it as a reminder of my weakness.” Daenerys inhales sharply. She does not know how he could be so wrong.

“Or perhaps your queen wishes to view it because she is ever aware how close she came to losing you,” she says, and his head jerks up in astonishment. “I suppose you will never know, will you?” She turns away. “You may put your gauntlet back on. And then my wine, if you will, Ser.”

“Of course, my queen.” This time, she allows him to take the decanter. She even allows him to get most of the way to the door, his shoulders relaxing in anticipation of being out of her presence. She allows him that hope.

“Someday, Ser Jorah,” she calls, and he turns, enough for her to see his face, the tension running through him again like lightning, “I will want to see the rest.”

The muscle flickering in his jaw is like a gift from the gods, the involuntary clench of his free hand into a fist is like an answered prayer, and Daenerys is soundly asleep in her bed by the time Jorah returns with her wine.


	3. and fishnets, and malice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fashion advice.

“I simply cannot decide,” Dany simpers, and Jorah looks at her like she is speaking a foreign tongue he has no hope of deciphering. Daenerys brandishes the two gowns at him, one fine blue silk and the other heavy crimson velvet, as different from one another as dusk and midday. She knows which she prefers, of course; the blue, so like the ones she used to wear in Meereen, the ones that Jorah used to watch her in, as hungry as one of her children circling their prey. But those days are past. “Which of these would be more appropriate to wear to court tomorrow?”

Jorah blinks, just once, and on any other man it would just be a blink. But Jorah can communicate a sentence by a raised eyebrow alone, or a decision by just the clasp of his hands in front of him instead of behind. Daenerys can read Jorah like a book thumbed through a thousand times, and the blink says _what is this madness_ and _why are you asking me this_ and _oh gods what do I say._

“The red, my queen, is more appropriate for court,” he answers. “it is one of the colours of your house, and is more formal than the other. But the blue is…”

“Is…” Daenerys prompts, when it appears he is not going to finish the sentence. “It is… what, exactly, Ser Jorah?”

“Prettier,” he says all in a rush, like saying such a dainty word will reflect badly on his reputation as a stoic, stern warrior. “It suits you better. You have always looked well in blue.”

Daenerys purses her lips. She hears what he is saying, without ever speaking another word, by the shine to his eyes and the faint smile twitching at one corner of his mouth. _Beauty_ , and _beloved_ , and _khaleesi_ , and _o I will love you to the end of time, until we both turn to dust and the ghost grass covers all the world._

She has not the words to answer, and she cannot communicate her regard in the fashion that he is so adept at. He cannot know, how it stirs her heart to see him standing there, as steady as iron, as unrelenting as steel.

“I see,” she says instead, curtly, and wears the red in the morning, the velvet heavy on her shoulders, but not nearly as weighty as the memory of his gaze, the worship in his eyes as palpable as a hand laid on the ivory of her skin, like Jorah could reach out and touch her, if only she’d allow him.

If only she’d allow herself.


	4. and charming, and vicious

Dany leans her head back against the rim of the copper bathtub, her eyes closed, every inch of her immersed in the scalding water save for her head and her feet dangling over the edge of the tub. The contrast of heat and cool is remarkably pleasant, after her wearisome day of lords talking _at_ her, not to her, about all their petty desires. The land they want and the minor lords they want to swear fealty to them, but for her to take a husband, primarily. Every conversation seems to inevitably circle around a thousand different variations on the same theme: _my queen, you are yet unwed, and isn’t it a startling coincidence but my own son / nephew / ward is of marriageable age and looking to take a wife, your Grace, should I send for him to come to court –_

Dany’s eyes snap open in frustration. She wearies of it, of the games and dances and lies and pretences of courtly life. Tyrion had warned her she would not like it. Simpler were the days when she had only Daario and Jorah and Tyrion, Grey Worm and Missandei and Ser Barristan at her side. Yet Barristan is dead, Tyrion now her Hand, Missandei and Grey Worm are married and are the lord and lady of a quiet little castle in the Stormlands. Daario keeps the peace in Meereen. And Daenerys herself is now queen of Westeros as well as her territories across the Narrow Sea. Times have changed.

Still, how many times must a woman say no gracefully? And how many times can a _queen_ refuse such offers gently before she has to unsheathe her claws? Blood of the dragon she is, after all, but her lords and courtiers can only see her as a woman, weak and feeble and in need of defence.

Dany sighs. _Next time, I will breathe fire at them_ , she vows, just as she has all the times before. She stretches out a hand, and rings the small silver bell on the table by the tub. “Ser Jorah!” she calls. It is his night on duty.

There is a quick, sharp series of knocks – of course, of course he must knock even after being explicitly invited in, the man is _infuriating_ – and her knight strides in. Dany watches, avid, as he looks around before almost instantaneously noticing the tub, and that she is naked beneath the milky surface.

Jorah flinches, and looks away.

“My queen,” he says, and his voice is ever rougher than usual. “Forgive my intrusion.” Daenerys just laughs at him.

“I invited you into my quarters, Ser Jorah,” she replies. “How could that be considered an intrusion?”

It’s fascinating, watching him try to come up with a delicate way to refer to her nudity without actually explicitly mentioning it. “You are… not dressed, my queen,” he finally settles upon. Dany shrugs, the movement sending ripples across the surface of her little pond and drawing Jorah’s eyes back to her. Good. She hopes he suffers for it.

“Am I not? How blind of me not to notice,” she comments archly, and there is a dull flush spreading over Jorah’s lined face. He knows, now, that she is mocking him, but it is not enough – will never be enough – to shift him from his post. Daenerys counts on that.

“I should leave you to your bath, your Grace,” he says, but he does not move. He will not, unless she orders it of him. Jorah is a good and loyal servant. He has learned, to his pains, that is does not help him to be otherwise.

“I summoned you here for a reason,” Dany says, and twirls a foot idly. “I require more hot water, and my maids have retired for the night. Fetch it for me.”

She does not need to say please. A dragon does not need to be polite to a bear. The dragon devours the bear.

Jorah wavers. “Your chambers will be left unattended, your Grace,” he says, uncertain. “I will not put you in harm’s way.” At that, Daenerys can’t help but laugh. It is not a happy laugh.

“But my child is an acceptable risk?” she asks, voice snapping out like a whip. Jorah flinches, and Dany curses herself. Out of all his betrayals, that is the one that still stings, that he could sell her life and Rhaego’s life to the Usurper. It is so ancient a hurt, she does not always have control of it.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Daenerys flings up a hand to stop him. “That was uncivil of me,” she says tiredly. “I did not mean to cast up your old mistakes to you. Please, just fetch my hot water.”

And to think, she’d thought a dragon had no need to say please to a bear. But she is close to exhausted, and no doubt there will be more of them tomorrow, more wretched men who think they can instruct her in her duty, to the realm and to her subjects but never to her own heart. A queen has no need of a heart, Dany thinks grimly, building up to a really good sulk. Nor does a woman need a heart, not in this wretched realm –

Unbidden, she thinks of her subjects, and can’t help a rueful smile at her own foolishness. After all, there is Lady Sansa, who rules Winterfell alone and with an iron hand, and Brienne, Sansa’s sworn shield, a knight as honourable and lethal as any male Ser. Asha Greyjoy on her salt throne, and the Sand Snakes of Dorne, each one different and yet deadly. Lady Mormont of Bear Island, an icy-eyed maid of three-and-ten, the leader of her people and the ruler of her House. Jorah’s kin, and as fierce a warrior as any Dany has met before.

All women, and all free.

Maybe it is not so far away, the day that a queen can have the same. And there is one man nearby who would never dream of telling her who to marry.

Perhaps she can take comfort, in that.


	5. maybe if you were, I would

The Red Keep is too vast for its occupants to dine in the manner of smaller halls, with the lords and ladies on a dais and their serving men and women on lower tables in order of importance. Besides, Dany does not enjoy such spectacles; she prefers to dine in smaller numbers. It is a habit she got into as a conqueror queen; it is not one she is inclined to break now. Tyrion often joins her; they make their way through a handful of courses and discuss matters of the realm, although invariably they are side-tracked into meditations on the politics of Essos, the memories of the past, and the places they have only ever seen in books. Their conversations are as easy as breathing; Dany has not known him long, not really, and yet he is like a brother to her, the brother Viserys could never be. And he is her advisor. He will never lead her false.

Dany counts many others among her subjects as her friends, but too often of late they have only been able to visit in letters. Even Tyrion must occasionally visit his holdings at Casterly Rock - much diminished of late, now that gold is no longer found in its lands, and even more so by its current lord’s profound disinterest in maintaining affairs at the Rock. Yet they are absences all the same.

Grey Worm and Missandei visit as often as they can, but they have their own lives, and their small tribe of adopted children to contend with. Sansa and Jon are at Winterfell, likely still dancing around one another, and Daario… well. Dany will never see Daario again.

And the list of dead friends stretches ever longer. Those lost in the war against the Others, the Dothraki and Unsullied killed when she took Westeros, and even further back: Ser Barristan, Irri, and those she loved as more than friends: Drogo, Rhaego, even her brother. For all of his failures, Viserys was still her brother.

Daenerys lives in a keep surrounded by hundreds of people, and yet she is often alone.

She sets down her fork, clears away the small mountain of paperwork she’s been reading through as she dined alone, and calls for Ser Jorah.

Jorah guards outside her chambers four nights of a week. He’s not the only one, of course; there are patrolling Unsullied, now the official guards of King’s Landing, even if they to a man refuse to wear the golden cloaks. And at least one of her Queensguard is always nearby, although Daenerys tries not to ask too much of them. She does not ask that the men and women of her Queensguard forsake love and land to serve her. After all, she is not in the practice of keeping slaves, and there is something that reeks distinctly of slavery in forbidding one’s subjects to wed or hold lands. Daenerys does not believe in it.

Jorah enters, his head bowed. He is looking older, of late. It is hard for Daenerys to remember, at times, that Jorah is so much older than her. Since she was little more than a girl she has known him; she has been _khaleesi_ and queen and _khaleesi_ and queen over again, and he is still here. To be sure, he has seen more years than most soldiers ever live to – cut down in their prime, or younger.

Jorah is no longer in his prime. Yet he has regained much of the vigour the greyscale had sapped from him. She sometimes sees him sparring with the Unsullied, and for all their skill, they very rarely are able to best him. Occasionally, she will see Jorah training the younger Unsullied, the ones who were still boys in training when she freed them. He is patient with them, as he once was with an exiled princess who hungered to know more of the lands of her birth. Quiet, and calm, and so different to anyone she had ever known.

The memory gives Daenerys an odd pang in her breast, and she forces it away. “Ser Jorah,” she says now, shaking her head as if to clear it off the cobwebs of the past. “Good evening.”

Jorah looks wary. She can hardly blame him. Invitations to her quarters are very rarely pleasant for him, although Daenerys herself takes a dark, almost savage delight in tormenting him. “Your Grace,” he replies. “The hour is late.” Dany sighs. It is so like him, to turn even a greeting into a rebuke.

“A queen’s work is never done,” she retorts tartly. “Wouldn’t you agree?” Jorah ducks his head.

“I would not know, your Grace. I am not a queen, only the servant of one,” he says lowly, his eyes on his boots. He is so much taller than Dany; occasionally it makes her catch her breath. “I would not presume to tell your Grace her duties.” Daenerys frowns. He does not often call her ‘your Grace’; it is usually ‘my queen’, an odd quick honorific, as if when he says her title what he is really saying something else entirely. But… ‘your Grace’. There is nothing personal in it. There is nothing of _Jorah_ in it.

“Are you well, Ser Jorah?” Daenerys finds herself saying, and could bite her tongue off for the impulsiveness of it. Jorah’s head jerks up in surprise; it has been a long time since she asked after his health. Since he returned to Westeros, in fact.

“Quite well, my queen,” he replies, clearly startled, but Dany hides a smile all the same. _My queen_. All is as the world should be. “And you?”

Daenerys frowns. “I beg your pardon?” Jorah is blushing; dull red spreading up what she can see of his neck, swarming up over his cheeks.

“My apologies, your Grace.” Dany scowls. There it is again. She does not like it. “I only meant… are you well, also?” Daenerys sighs.

“Physically, there is nothing wrong with me, Ser Jorah,” she replies dryly. “Mentally, however, I fear I will run mad before I can decipher what my dear nephew is saying between the lines of the exceptionally dry and dutiful letter he has sent me.” Jorah seems to understand.

“From Lord Snow?” Daenerys nods. Her nephew has refused to take the Targaryen name – or the Stark one, for that matter. He claims to be only a vassal of Lady Sansa, despite spending an ordinate amount of time at Winterfell. To be sure, it is his childhood home, and yet… “I – that is –”

“Yes, Ser Jorah?” Daenerys asks, amused. Jorah swallows; Dany watches the lump in his throat bob with something like fascination. It is always interesting, to watch him filter his thoughts into something appropriate to say. It comes so much harder to him these days than it ever did before; now, when all his secrets have been laid bare.

“I am a Northerner – as you know,” Jorah adds quickly when Dany arches an eyebrow. “Perhaps I may be able to lend some assistance in interpreting Lord Snow’s missive.” Daenerys blinks. She was not expecting him to offer something so… _personal_.

“If… if you think you may be able to aid me, Ser Jorah, then it would be churlish of me to refuse your offer,” she says finally, after taking a moment to recover her composure. “You may pull up the spare chair, if you wish.”

Jorah’s eyes widen just a touch, and Daenerys can read him like a well-thumbed book: _Sit beside you? Like when you were young?_ In reply Daenerys gives him an almost infinitesimal nod. Jorah draws in a deep breath, as though girding himself against a plunge into uncharted waters. Or bracing himself for battle.

“Very well, my queen,” he says at length, and draws up another chair. He sits beside her tentatively, and Dany passes him the letter. Their fingers brush.

Jorah pulls his hand away like he’s been burned by candle flame. “Right,” he says, collecting himself with a visible effort, “now. Let me have a look –”

Daenerys watches him peruse the letter, his lips moving slightly as he reads, and can think of nothing but when he’d returned to her, after he’d been healed. She’d been at Dragonstone, brooding over the map of Westeros, when he’d been announced; Daenerys had turned, her heart in her throat.

He had been dusty and careworn, but he had looked more alive than he had seemed in years. Daenerys did not know, whether it had been the loss of the disease or the sight of her, that had heartened him so. She was not sure she wanted to know.

“So,” she’d said. “You’ve returned. And you are healed?”

“Yes, your Grace,” he’d replied, his eyes downcast. Daenerys had lifted his chin with a finger, forcing him to meet her eyes – something in her blood had awoken when he’d tried to pull away without moving an inch. That this was something she could have – Jorah, at her mercy, Jorah, at her side.

“Good,” she’d said briskly. “Come. We have work to do.” Jorah had looked at her then, and smiled with a brilliance she had not known he was capable of expressing so openly.

“Of course, my queen,” he’d replied, and Daenerys’ heart had stuttered in her chest.

As it does now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas / prompts / ways they'd like to see Dany torture Jorah a bit more...


	6. baby, it's as good as it gets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A massive thank you to Wildfire1980 for the amazing ideas. :)

 Daenerys bolts upright. For a moment her eyes cannot adjust to the darkness; the hangings of her bed loom like the limbs of spectral trees, and she cannot recall where she is or how to she came to be here. But the amnesia is fleeting; she comes back to herself in one great rush. She is queen, and she is in the Red Keep, in King’s Landing, her ancestral seat. (Well, one of them.) But the walls around her are like a pen to fence her in; she feels like a small, trapped animal searching desperately for a way free of the snare.

Her feet are on the floor and she is standing before she has a moment to think.

It happens, sometimes. Too much time spent among the Dothraki, underneath the open sky; too many moons in her quarters in the Great Pyramid of Meereen, with its wide windows, too high for arrows or assassins to penetrate. Daenerys is the queen of Westeros, but she is not Westerosi. She has spent too much time in foreign lands for that.

Dany slips on a robe over her sleeping gown, ignoring the small inner voice that warns this is a terrible idea. She is the queen. If she wants to wander around her own keep in the small hours, then she is perfectly entitled to.

She yanks open the door to her rooms.

The guard on her door this evening is one who has followed her since she freed him from the Wise Masters of Astapor, an Unsullied called White Dragon. She knows he has kept part of his name from his slave days; the rest, in honour of her. She smiles at him.

“You cannot sleep, my queen?” he asks in his lilting voice. Daenerys nods, and draws her cloak more firmly around her.

“I had a sudden thought, and wanted to consult one of my advisors –” She stops. White Dragon’s dark eyes are gleaming with something, that even behind the bland mask taught to all Unsullied, can only be called mischief. “You don’t really care that I am leaving my chambers in the Hour of the Wolf, do you?” she asks. White Dragons shakes his head, a shadow of smile lurking at the corner of his mouth.

“No, my queen,” he replies frankly. “I do not. What my queen does is her concern and her concern alone, and I am but her servant. But I must accompany you.” Daenerys can’t bite back another smile.

“Of course not,” she agrees solemnly. “I intend to visit Ser Jorah. Will you come with me?”

The young man nods in reply. He offers her his arm – a courtly gesture he must have learned here in King’s Landing – and together they make their way through the keep. Daenerys lets him guide her steps; he knows better than she the way to Jorah’s rooms. Many of her Unsullied still regard Ser Jorah highly, even knowing he betrayed their queen.

Dany pushes the thought away. She does not wish to think of it.

 

She bids White Dragon goodbye at the entrance to Jorah’s rooms, and tries the knob. The door is not locked. Of course it isn’t.

Daenerys enters, and steps into moonlight.

Jorah’s quarters are small and plain, but they boast one redeeming feature; a window large enough to climb out of, big enough to give the impression, if only fleetingly, that the wide world is only a step away. She forgets, how long Jorah slept in tents or simply under the open sky, both in service to her and in exile. The walls of King’s Landing must feel like nothing so much as a prison to him.

Strange. She’d thought she was the only one who felt the halls of her keep around her like a vice.

Jorah sleeps under the window, sprawled out on his back on a small, low bed. Daenerys feels something like a pang in her chest; he is too tall for his bed, his feet hanging off the end, his sheet rucked down to around his hips.

He is not wearing a shirt.

Daenerys stares, and then stares some more. The greyscale she has wondered of so often is bare to her eyes. It extends up Jorah’s arm, tendrils of it creeping up over his biceps to lick at the solid, muscled joint. His arm from wrist to shoulder is cracked, mottled skin. Daenerys knows the sight should repulse her, but she can’t help it.

She is _fascinated_.

She has not seen Jorah without his shirt since the old days, the days when she was his _khaleesi_ , when she had not known the fullness of his betrayal. He’d been sparring with the Unsullied, his shirt discarded in the summer heat, down to nothing more than his boots and his breeches. When he’d seen her, leaning over the balustrade to watch the sparring, he’d flushed to the roots of his hair, but finished the bout. But the moment he was able, he’d seized his shirt, thrown it over his head, and then avoided Daenerys for the rest of the day. She’d found it amusing, then, that her counsellor was so incautious in his regard for her.

She’d been younger, then. Colder, perhaps, and surer of herself. She had burned the slavers of Astapor alive with her child’s flames, and nailed a hundred and sixty-three Wise Masters to crosses along the road to Meereen, as surely as she’d lifted the hammer in her own hands to drive the nails deep. For all it had been Drogon’s breath and her soldiers’ fists, it had been Daenerys who struck the blow.

It was her order that caused it all.

Fire, and blood.

There is a soft sound from the bed, and Daenerys looks back to see that Jorah’s eyes are open, blinking away the sleep, pupils wide and dark in the glow from the moon and the stars.

He can see her.

And he is smiling.

“Daenerys,” he says roughly, and Dany nearly gasps aloud. It has been a lifetime or more, since the sound of him uttering her true name. “Am I dreaming?”

Something in Dany’s heart clenches. His face is so open. His eyes are shining in the moonlight, and she cannot bear to hurt him.

“Yes, Jorah,” she replies. “Go back to sleep. I will be here when you wake.”

He must be weary, to believe it. He lies back down, his eyes not leaving her, drinking in the sight of her in the half-light. Dany sighs. She crosses the room, kneels beside his bed, and brushes back an errant lock of hair from his face. He really is balding dreadfully. It shouldn’t make her all the fonder of him, her bear.

“Sleep, Jorah,” she murmurs, almost too softly to be heard. He smiles, the curve of his cheek in her palm, his stubble scratching at her skin.

“ _Khaleesi_ ,” he replies, the closest thing to bliss on his face she can ever recall seeing. The old name is like a breath of wind from her foreign lands, a rush of something dear and familiar and lost. Daenerys is strong, but not steel enough to endure it.

He sleeps.

Daenerys slips out of his rooms before dawn. It would not do to be caught here, for all it is impossible to keep a secret in this wretched city. Her city.

And she has work to be done.


End file.
